


a gentle, beating heart

by rynleaf



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Childbirth, Cure for the Taint, F/M, Grey Wardens, Post-Canon, Post-Trespasser, Unplanned Pregnancy, lies of ommission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-21 08:07:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21071654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rynleaf/pseuds/rynleaf
Summary: In which the Warden-Commander searches for a Cure, finds herself in an unexpected situation, and elects not to send several very important letters.





	a gentle, beating heart

**Author's Note:**

> I have no excuse other than being emotional about mothers, and also watching several seasons of _Call the Midwife_ in one sitting. And because I find the idea of Zev as a father very, very soft. 
> 
> **Warnings:** in case you haven't read the tags, this fic contains unplanned pregnancy, some ensuing feelings, a not-too-graphic childbirth scene (seriously, it's fine), and several academic references (for which there is no real reason apart from venting my increasing thesis stress, and my love for footnotes.)
> 
> Enjoy!

_“Many believe that the figure of the Hero of Ferelden is outshadowed in significance by ‘bigger players’ in Dragon Age Thedas history--the Inquisition is a notable example, and so are the events that occurred ten years after its dissolution.[1] This chapter endeavours to offer an overview of Warden-Commander Surana’s later life: her search for a much-sought Cure for the darkspawn taint, her family’s involvement in major historical events, and how it influenced some of the most significant political changes of the world in her Age.”_

Excerpt from Chapter 3. of _Dragons, Heroes and a History of Chaos: A Comparative Analysis of Notable Historical Figures Between 9:25-9:99 Dragon_ by Aloisa Divine, in association with the University of Val Royeaux and the Fereldan College of Magi, 6:36 Starsteel.

It has to be in the middle of nowhere, of course, and there have to be darkspawn. In number. Underground.

“It’s impossible,” Iraine says. Ariste moves his hand on her abdomen, the glow of magic lighting up the mineshaft and the still-smouldering darkspawn corpses, and frowns apologetically.

“There’s a heartbeat.”

“It’s_ impossible_,” Iraine repeats, mostly to herself, as Carver rounds the corner at a jog and calls:

“More coming our way! Is it bad?”

“No injury,” Ariste says, sounding somewhat uncertain. “The Commander is, well--”

“Later,” Iraine interjects, gripping her staff for balance, and stands up. “I’ll deal with this later. Or never, perhaps,” she adds quietly, turning away from the concerned expression on Carver’s face and toward the mouth of the mineshaft in anticipation.

Her heart is beating too fast.

After--once the whispers in her mind go quiet, once the last of the darkspawn falls--, she allows herself to sink down on an empty crate and bury her face in her hands.

A baby. A _baby_.

Her right hand moves to touch her stomach quite without her permission, and the sigh that shudders out of her is decidedly watery.

“Commander?” Ariste kneels down in front of her once again.

“What about the taint,” Iraine says quietly.

“I don’t know,” he replies. “A visit to a proper healer wouldn’t go amiss, and perhaps no more travelling until further notice?”

“I’m behind on my paperwork anyway,” Iraine says, and her voice sounds so alien: high pitched and scared, not at all like her carefully controlled usual self. It’s a weak attempt at a joke anyway. Carver peers anxiously over Ariste’s shoulder, and Ariste waves his hand: later.

“All right,” she says then, and decides not to think about the hundreds of miles separating her from Vigil’s Keep, from home, from… “Let’s move out.”

\---

_<strike>Love,</strike> _

_Zevran, _

_I hope all is well.<strike> I know we just parted not long ago, and you know I loath to</strike> _

_<strike>Please find me. It’s</strike> _

_I don’t know what to do._

[Found crumpled between the floorboards of a hay barn’s loft somewhere in the Anderfels, dated Cloudreach 9:44 Dragon. Preserved in the Val Royeaux Chantry Archive.]

\---

Healer Anais is a woman in her fifties, round and stern-faced, smelling of herbs and the faint, antiseptic scent of healing magic. She peers over her knitting when Iraine knocks on her door.

“Ditre from the inn sent me,” Iraine starts. “I think I’m… my companion says that I might be…,” she stops, looking at the healer in quiet desperation. She can’t make herself say it. Even the thought drives her half-crazy.

Healer Anais says nothing for a minute that seems to last for an eternity, then she takes off her glasses, puts down her knitting and stands up.

“All right, lass,” she says. Her voice is full of kindness. “Up the table you get, and let us see what‘s what, shall we?”

She holds her arm as Iraine clambers up the narrow examination table, then she opens her shirt to place a palm on her skin. Ambient magic hums as she moves her hands around. It tingles. Iraine wonders briefly if this is what it will feel like, later, when…

“So?” she asks, before she can start screaming, or, worse, sobbing into the healer’s motherly shoulders. Healer Anais rights her shirt and helps her sit up.

“Your companion was quite correct,” she says, and Iraine’s fingers go numb. “I would say three, four months along, not like it shows much--happens with girls like you, skinny as a stick.”

“Oh,” Iraine says, hand fluttering to, and then away from her stomach. _“Oh.”_

Healer Anais tuts and hands her a handkerchief. She wipes the tears that escape her eyes quite without her consent.

“I thought it was impossible,” Iraine says, feeling no less stunned than in that first moment, after she fell and vomited all over the mineshaft floor between corpses of darkspawn and unused mining equipment. The stench, the feeling of unease, Ariste’s bewildered expression.

“That’s what they all think,” Healer Anais says, not unkindly. She smiles and touches a hand to Iraine’s shoulder. “He went and got you in trouble, didn’t he? Off on another adventure now?”

“Something like that,” Iraine says and can barely smother a laugh, bewildered, disbelieving. There was a slow afternoon in an Antivan guesthouse at the break of the new year. A hurried detour, a blink of quiet before parting again. Zevran brushed her hair out and said:_ I like it long. It suits you._

“No matter,” the healer says. “It’s us women who do the hard work anyway. The Maker will take care of the rest.”

“Of course.”

“Is your mother around, lass?”

The question is so unexpected, Iraine can only stare at her for a few long seconds. Then she sighs and smiles up at the other woman.

“My mother is dead, Healer. Has been for twenty-three years or so, if the Chantry records are correct.”

She isn’t surprised, but Iraine can tell that the answer makes her sad. She wonders how she would feel if she knew that she couldn’t remember her mother’s name until she unearthed it from a Chantry archive on the deaths and births in the Denerim alienage: Idha Surana née Valente, birth date unknown, died 9:16 Dragon. She finds her own name two pages before. Iraine Valente Surana. Born 9:10, died 9:16 Dragon.

She didn’t know she had a middle name, until then.

“No matter, lass,” Healer Anais says again, and pats Iraine’s hand. “If you decide to keep the babe, there are some instructions you need to follow, some herbs to take--any good healer will tell you the same, I should think, for you don’t look like you’re staying around these parts for too long.”

“If I decide…”

“It is up to you, is it not?”

Iraine stares at her hands in her lap. It sinks in like a physical sensation: a baby. Hers. Fingers and toes. Golden eyes, perhaps, and dusky skin, pointed ears and dark hair. To make something living, to be a mother.

“Yes,” she says, and her voice shakes. “Yes.”

“Good,” Healer Anais says. She squeezes Iraine’s shoulder in a way that reminds her painfully of Wynne, and rounds her desk to rummage around in her drawers. “This will help with sickness,” she says and hands her a pouch of green-smelling herbs. “You may keep the handkerchief. Please don’t do any heavy lifting, yes?”

Iraine leaves the hut dry eyed and deeply, deeply exhausted. She walks back to the inn in an unseeing daze, sinks into a chair by the fire, and thinks.

\---

_Love, _

_I have news. I’m unsure at the moment whether it’s good news or bad, or what sense I can make of it--I’m thinking about my mother in a way that I haven’t for years, and memory is failing me. I can’t recall her face anymore. _

_Forgive me, love, I’m not making any sense. <strike>The news, then: </strike>_

_ <strike>I’m pr </strike> _

_<strike>I’m expecti</strike> _

[Recovered fragment from the ashes of a fire in the Crooked Sun inn’s common room, dated Bloomingtide 9:44 Dragon. Preserved in the Archival Materials section of the Weisshaupt Warden Memorial Museum.]

\---

“A baby,” Carver says with an expression so dumbfounded, Iraine can barely smother a smile. Ariste looks at her like she’s losing it.

“Yes, Carver. You know, that’s what happens when a man and a woman--”

“Stop, please,” Carver says. “Andraste’s tits, Commander. How long…?”

“Not long enough,” Iraine says. “About five months, if the healer’s right.”

“What about the Cure?”

Iraine tightens the clasp on her saddlebag and checks the stirrup. Her hands are steady.

“We’ve been on the road for five years,” she says quietly. “We’re very close.”

“Commander,” Ariste protests, “please, consider it. We can turn back home, at least until... your condition--”

“You know as well as I do how little time we have,” Iraine interjects. Her fingers find the curve of her abdomen--barely visible under her armour unless one knows what to look for, a thing with a heart, a thing with her blood. “The false Calling has taught us that much. We can’t afford losing time.”

Carver rakes his fingers through his hair.

“Well, I have a lead on that rumoured wyvern,” he says, and ignores Ariste’s pained groan. “Caverns above the village, freezing cold. Sounds like heaps of fun.”

“All right,” Iraine says, and pats her horse on the nose before swinging herself into the saddle.

Ariste rolls his eyes, then follows suit.

They find the wyvern in a shallow cave after wading through an icy pond, almost losing one of the horses to a gaping chasm by the path and half their supplies with it.

“I hope you know what you’re doing, Commander,” Carver yells over the creature’s shriek, narrowly avoiding the glassy claws as it slams between them. Iraine rises from her crouch and twirls her staff. Necrotic magic smells like it always does: damp earth, bone dust, rotting leaves.

She exhales grey smoke and smiles.

“After all these years, you still doubt me?”

Carver scoffs and braces himself.

“Never, my lady.”

The wyvern expires on Iraine’s staff blade, and its scales find a place in the box next to their other, most precious possessions.

A promise.

\---

_Dear Zevran, _

_I have started this letter so many times, I forget the count. _

_(That is not true. This is the seventh one that lasted longer than ‘Dear Zevran’.) _

_We killed a snowy wyvern today and it was beautiful and alive and it made me miss you so much, I ache--I wish your quest was finally over, so you could return to me. Let us save the world together, you and me, again. Wouldn’t that be just the thing? _

_Or perhaps we should retire to that seaside house you promised me years ago. It’s a good place for raising children._

[Found by an abandoned campsite high up in the Wandering Hills, dated Justinian 9:44 Dragon. Preserved in the Archival Materials section of the Weisshaupt Warden Memorial Museum.]

\---

The Inquisition is due to meet them soon. It is the height of summer on the Nevarran border, the heat dry and all-encompassing: sweat trickles down Iraine’s back as they wait under the shade of a tree, the horses nibbling on sparse grass. Ariste passes her a waterskin. She smiles at him gratefully.

“Shouldn’t be long now,” he says.

“I know,” Iraine replies.

“Everything all right, Commander?”

“Sore back,” Iraine says and shifts to sit more comfortably, the loose shirt draping down her stomach that has grown from a barely-there thickness into something quite unmistakable. She smoothes a hand down it and smiles at the answering movement.

“Zevran will kill me for having him miss this,” she adds quietly. Ariste frowns.

“You still haven’t sent word, have you.”

She sighs and closes her eyes. Another letter lies in her pack, unfinished--words on paper never seem good enough, full enough to carry the magnitude of a living thing, the conflicting urges to return home and to find the cure as soon as possible, the fear of the taint in her blood killing her unborn child. The fear that Zevran might… that he…

“Look,” Ariste says, shaking her out of her reverie, and she follows his fingers pointing toward the horizon, the dust kicked up by hooves and the faint glimmer of armour. She sighs, shrugs her robe over the undershirt and picks up her staff from where it leans against the tree.

“Showtime.” 

“Commander, this is Inquisitor Lavellan,” Carver says, wiping sweat and road dust off his forehead. Iraine steps forward and grasps the elven woman’s forearm in greeting.

“I didn’t expect the Inquisitor herself,” Iraine says. Lavellan grins.

“Anything to get me out of the house these days, you know what I mean?”

“Already missing the fight against ancient Tevinter mages?”

That wins a laugh, and Iraine smiles as the Inquisitor gestures her companions closer.

“This is Seeker Pentaghast, and my friend, Varric--he insisted on coming along. I understand you have something that belongs to him?”

“Junior belongs to nobody but himself,” the dwarf says, but his smile is pleased. Carver rolls his eyes.

“Do you have it?” Iraine asks then.

Lavellan’s expression grows serious. She gestures at the Seeker behind her, who drags a piece of cloth off a wooden box: it steams white frost even under the punishing sun, the edges covered in swirling, icy marks.

“The box is enchanted,” Lavellan says. “Dagna did something very clever, half of which I don’t even care to understand, so it will keep fresh and working fine until you have need of it.”

Iraine reaches out and takes the box, wiping her thumb on the enchanted lock. It leaves a smear of blood, which is absorbed quickly. The lid clicks open.

“That is… very gross,” Ariste says, peering at the beating heart lying on a bed of magical snow.

“A Fereldan Frostback, just as we promised,” Lavellan says.

“I hope you will use it well,” the Seeker adds, and Iraine bows her head.

“I am in your debt.”

“And we will use it, no question about that,” Lavellan says with a grin, sharp like a knife’s edge, and Varric laughs.

“Careful what you get yourself into, Warden. This one is scary when she puts her mind to it.”

“I promise I will keep Josephine out of it until at least…,” she glances at Iraine’s stomach, then at her face. “Until that one is out of the oven, anyway.”

_“Sorel,”_ the Seeker hisses under her nose. Lavellan shrugs and smiles.

“A story for the ages, I’m sure,” she says, and pats Iraine’s shoulder. The touch is light. “Time to head back,” she says then, turning, and they all glance toward the sinking sun on the horizon. “Camp is not close, and time is a-pressing.”

“Good hunting, Inquisition,” Iraine says. Varric gestures toward Carver.

“Take care of him, yes?”

The three of them wait until the trio is out of sight. Iraine cradles the box close to her chest, the cold seeping through its cover and her clothes like a breath of winter in the clammy Solace evening, the heartbeat a faint vibration against her middle.

“I’ve always wanted to kill a dragon.” Carver says glumly. Ariste almost doubles over laughing.

\---

_Zevran, _

_We made something living, you and I. Can you believe it?_

[Recovered fragment from an alley waste disposal crate, opposite a horse exchange outpost close to the Nevarran-Orlesian border, dated Solace 9:44 Dragon. Preserved in the Val Royeaux Chantry Archive.]

\---

“Does he know?” Carver asks one evening, the two of them bending over maps and notes and strings spread out on the bed in the room they are sharing. Ariste is downstairs, procuring dinner. Iraine is fighting a persistent headache.

Carver doesn’t take his eyes off the map, but Iraine still feels his scrutiny like a physical weight.

“No,” she says. He glances up, then back down.

“Why not?”

She sighs, leans back against the bed and rubs her aching back.

“It’s not something I can just put in a letter,” she says. Carver gives her a dubious frown--they both know it’s a terrible excuse.

“So what, he’s gonna come back from his Antivan vengeance-trip, only to find you with a toddler behind your skirts? That will sure go down well.”

“I don’t _know,_ Carver,” Iraine snaps, regretting it immediately--she reaches up to squeeze his shoulder in apology, and he sits back on his haunches to take a better look at her.

“It’s not far now, is it?”

“No,” she says, and curls an arm around her stomach.

“You have to tell him,” Carver says gently.

“I can’t.”

“This is not like you, Commander. You aren’t usually one to put off things.”

“Oh Carver, I wish you stopped trying to be kind and just went back to your usual surly self,” Iraine says and lets her head drop back against the mattress, eyes closed against the lantern light.

“What’s scaring you so much?”

“You, right now, attempting to talk about feelings.”

“Oh please,” Carver mutters and leans against the bed opposite. He drums his fingernails on the floor, and says: “We flipped a coin. I lost.”

“Oh that is hilarious,” Iraine says.

They sit quietly for a few minutes.

“You know” Carver says, and his voice is uncharacteristically wistful, “my sister has many flaws, but she has taught me one thing: sometimes using the right words doesn’t matter. Sometimes bad words are enough.”

“I would enjoy meeting her one day,” Iraine says. “She sounds wise.”

Carver grimaces.

“She is a hotheaded idiot with a penchant for setting things on fire and using big words. I’m sure you’d get on, one mage of questionable talents with another.”

“Hey,” Iraine chides, but there’s no real heat behind it. “You know I’m useless at elemental magic.”

“The point is,” he says, undeterred, “sometimes you just gotta. Swallow the frog. Bite the arrow. Leap off the cliff, whatever.”

“Very poetic.”

“Shut up.”

Iraine opens her eyes, examining the water-stained ceiling, the sagging beams, the black soot marks left by torches and lanterns. She misses Zevran like a lost limb. She dreads seeing him again.

The two of them know almost everything there is to know about death: the way it feels to split skin and flesh on a blade, the way its smell fills the nose, the way it feels under her skin, in her magic. Her life is to take from the dying. His life is to kill, so others will not be made to do so.

The child is, in this too, impossible.

“We were not made for giving life,” she says. Carver snorts.

“Oh please.”

“A necromancer and and Antivan Crow. Can’t you see the irony?”

“It’s a baby,” Carver says, “not time magic.”

“Exactly,” she says.

“If you didn’t want it, why did you keep it?”

Iraine feels sudden anger crawl up her throat, and her fingers spark without her consent: purple necrotic energy releases into the floor, leaving tiny scorch marks. Carver exhales slowly.

“I do. Want it,” Iraine says tightly. “More than anything.”

“Well then.”

Iraine looks up to find Carver holding a stack of papers and a pen. He looks irritated.

“Ink is on the table. I’ll take it to the horse exchange once you’re done, for the sake of everyone’s sanity.”

“Except mine,” Iraine says sourly.

“Yours especially,” Carver says.

\---

_Dear Leliana, _

_I have a favour to ask of you: can you please make sure the attached note makes it to its intended recipient? _

_I know you will open it, so I won’t waste your time, or mine, with relaying its contents once more. I only ask for your discretion. _

_Thank you. _

_Your friend, _

_I._

_Zevran, _

_I don’t know when this will reach you, I only hope it finds you whole, and in time. We are making our way to Ansburg by the Antivan border as fast as we can. I hope you can meet us there within the next three weeks, as time is pressing. _

_I don’t think I can find the right words, so I’ll just go ahead and say it as it is: I will give birth to our child there, and I need you. _

_I’m scared, love. Please come. _

_Forgive me. _

_I._

[Letter and attachment recovered from partial sources in the Val Royeaux archives and Warden-Commander Surana’s personal collection of correspondences, dated Kingsway 9:44 Dragon.]

\---

Iraine has always wanted children in the nebulous, wistful way of people who know very well it is impossible: between the Circle and the Wardens, absolute control and certain infertility, it never occurred to her that it might become true one day. Motherhood is something strange. Alien.

“I wish Wynne was here,” she says as she lets herself be half-carried up the stairs, Carver barely sweating under her weight. “Closest person to a mother I ever had. Isn’t it strange, to think of a spirit of faith as a mother? It was so terrible when she died.”

“I believe you, Commander,” Carver says, as he deposits her into the armchair by the bed. Iraine adjusts her shoulder blanket and closes her eyes.

“You’re lucky,” she says absently, feeling a surge of wistful sadness. “You knew your mother. I know nothing about mine, or motherhood, or children, or--”

“Being brutally murdered by some magical freak?”

Iraine cracks her eyes open with a wince.

“I apologise. That was insensitive of me.”

“Well,” Carver says, hovering in the doorway, “you could argue you’ve mothered a Keep full of Wardens for the better part of ten years, that must count for something?”

Iraine laughs, winces again, then rests a hand on her back and one on her stomach.

“She had curly hair,” she says. “She smelled like sweat and sand, and she lifted me high enough so I could touch the leaves of the mother tree, once. I remember her laugh.”

“My mother was strong enough to lift all three of us at once, when we were children,” Carver offers. “We were babies, mind, and Maud was known to be a demanding rascal as a toddler.”

Iraine smiles, then hisses as another twinge of pain runs through her back.

“Carver,” she says breathlessly.

“Yeah?”

“Could you please go and fetch Ariste for me?”

Carver pales and catches himself on the doorframe. Iraine grits her teeth over a groan.

“You sure know your timing, little bird. _Now_, Carver, if you please. Thank you.”

Ariste arrives running. The landlady rushes to fetch a midwife, and she arrives with fuss and bluster: she orders hot water and towels and paper to be laid on the bed under the sheets, directing Iraine to stand and walk around as she counts the minutes between pains on a device the size of her palm.

“This is going to be fast,” she says. Her hands map out the lay of the baby through Iraine’s stomach, and she nods, satisfied. “Coming the right way around, thank the Maker, it’s going to be hard enough with how skinny you are. Elves,” she mutters under her nose, and wipes the sweat off Iraine’s forehead with a cool cloth. “Don’t you worry now, girl, just breathe. The body knows what to do, and I’m here to help with the rest.”

Iraine breathes hard and clutches Ariste’s arm. Electric sparks run the length of her fingers as the next pain comes.

“Zevran,” she says, “any news?”

“No, Commander,” he replies tightly. “Nothing yet.”

“All right then,” Iraine says and grits her teeth. “Baby first it is.”

Carver notices the racket first--it’s not easy, two floors up and through the muffled noises that comes through the door of their shared room, but the innkeeper’s voice is distinct enough.

“No, Serah, you can’t--,” and, “Get back down this instant!”

Carver reaches for his sword.

Careening up the stairs however comes not any number of enemies, but the Crow assassin: he’s covered in road dust and his eyes are sunken with lack of sleep, he smells distinctly of horse, and his expression is bordering on frantic. He skitters to a halt in front of Carver with ears twitching back.

“She,” Zevran says, breathing heavily. The Commander inside lets out a long, agonizing cry, and they both wince.

“Congratulations,” Carver says dryly, and sheaths his sword. Zevran puts his hand on the handle.

“She is waiting for you,” Carver adds gently.

Zevran glances at him, takes a shuddering breath, and opens the door.

“Slowly now, slowly. Good girl.” The midwife’s voice is soothing, calm through all the chaos. Iraine clings to it, clutches it close: everything hurts, sweat trickles into her eyes and her heart is beating so fast, she’s scared it will burst. Ariste’s hand is shaking under her fingers.

“Little pushes, don’t clench now. Very good.”

Somewhere distantly she registers the door opening, Ariste’s gasp. The midwife turns.

“What the void are you doing in here?”

“I--”

Iraine’s eyes flutter open, and he’s there--armour scuffed and dusty, hair in disarray. Real. Whole.

The joy of it overwhelmes everything for a long, blissful second.

“Don’t just stand there and gawk,” the midwife snaps, then: “either get out, or hold her, this one’s about to faint,” she gestures at Ariste, who scrambles gratefully away.

“Zev,” Iraine says. He’s by the bed in three long strides, hands reaching out, and she grasps them in relief as the next pain comes and crests, crests, unstoppable.

“Hello,” Zevran says into her hair. “I got your letter.”

“Less chatting, more pushing,” the midwife snaps. “Little breaths now, lass. Little breaths. That’s it--that’s it--head’s born,” she exclaims, and there is pain and unimaginable relief immediately after, the sensation of fluids dripping and muscles contracting over nothing.

“Come on now,” the midwife mutters under her nose. Then something whimpers, coughs, and cries out. “Oh well done,” the midwife says, and she smiles, impossibly wide. “You have a daughter, healthy and whole!”

Iraine reaches out searching arms, and she’s there, all of a sudden: wrapped in a towel, small as a whisper. She sees a head of curly dark hair and a wrinkled forehead, skin the colour of sand, lashes casting long shadows on the splotchy face and it is the most beautiful thing she has ever seen.

“Aren’t you full of surprises, my dear Warden,” Zevran says quietly, and she looks up to see his face full of wonder. A single tear hovers on his left cheekbone. She reaches up to wipe it off.

“Will you ever forgive me?” she asks, and her voice is unsteady with exhaustion.

“Oh, dearest,” Zevran says. He reaches out to touch his daughter’s face, lets a finger get trapped in a grasping, tiny hand, and sighs deeply. “I have some strongly worded admonishments prepared, if you’d like to hear them. Many of them start with ‘How could you.’”

“The whole thing rather got the better of my common sense,” Iraine says. She squeezes her eyes shut.

“I am furious with you for traipsing around Thedas with a child, _our_ child, for the record. Cure or no cure.”

“Oh, that” Iraine says, and looks up with a brilliant smile.

Zevran narrows his eyes, then bursts out laughing.

“You got it, didn’t you? You did! Oh, how can someone so clever be so foolish?”

“I can’t hear it,” Iraine says quietly. “No more whispers.”

Zevran leans his forehead against hers, hands cradling the back of her head, and there’s the smile she missed so terribly: the crinkles around the corners of his gold-coin eyes, the sharp canines, the effortless cheer. She holds her baby with one arm and lays her other hand on his cheek, heart full.

“Next time you have a baby however,” he says, “I’d like to know about it before the horrifying part starts.”

“Yes.”

“No more secrets, you hear me?”

“Yes.”

Zevran presses a kiss on her forehead and adds:

“Have you thought of a name yet?”

\---

“Idha!” Zevran calls, and follows the sounds of giggles and tiny feet slapping the stone corridor. “Idha-_linda,_ where are you, my love?”

He sees movement ahead, a mop of black curls peeking out from behind a half-shut door, the sound of a muffled laugh. Zevran walks past with exaggerated slowness.

“Where could she be?” he asks no one in particular, and lets out a very convincing yelp when the toddler barrels into his leg at full speed. He scoops her up with effortless grace and she shrieks as she’s hoisted high, arms outstretched, until they are face to face. He nuzzles the little girl’s nose.

“Da,” she says, and palms his face. Zevran leans into the sticky fingers.

“Stolen cakes from the kitchen again, have you?”

“No,” she exclaims, then ducks her head and giggles.

“Your mother will have a few things to say about that,” he says without heat, and Idha grins. Her eyes are two gold coins, sparkling with mirth.

“Let’s find her, shall we?” Zevran adds.

Iraine is half-buried under piles of correspondence, it seems, but she still smiles and puts down her pen when they enter. Her hair is longer than it used to be, falling around her shoulders in an even veil as she leans toward her child.

“Ma!” Idha says, and wiggles until Zevran sets her down, trotting across the hearthrug and stretching her arms in demand. Iraine settles her into her lap and buries her nose into her curls.

“Cakes again,” she says to Zevran, and he shrugs.

“Daughter of a thief,” he says. Iraine huffs a laugh.

“Rascal,” she says to Idha, who wiggles happily and burrows deeper into her arms.

\---

_“There is much research to be found on Warden-Commander Surana’s life and deeds--of which the least significant is the defeat of the Archdemon Urthemiel in 9:30 Dragon, and the most infamous is the discovery of a cure that successfully purged thousands of the darkspawn taint. Equally substantial evidence (if perhaps of less interest to many) exists about her private life. We know of her rather public affair with the King of Ferelden, of course, and her eventual retirement with the assassin who dismantled the Antivan Crows.[2] Her only daughter has grown up to be a rather fearsome warrior in her time, associated with several infamous mercenary bands active in the later half of the Dragon Age. [3] Whatever else is known about the later life of the Hero of Ferelden and her various associates, and how they influenced the following historical events that shaped our world to be what it is today, I shall elaborate on in the following chapters.”_

Excerpt from Chapter 3. of _Dragons, Heroes and a History of Chaos: A Comparative Analysis of Notable Historical Figures Between 9:25-9:99 Dragon_ by Aloisa Divine, in association with the University of Val Royeaux and the Fereldan College of Magi, 6:36 Starsteel.

**Author's Note:**

> 1 See relevant works by the infamous Varric Tethras, as well as chapters 22-25 of _Spread Word of an Inquisition…_ by Falon Gariaste and Helisma Lavellan, 6:19 Starsteel. [return to text]  
2 A rather archaic organisation employed by the Antivan Court throughout the Ages. See relevant reference materials by Genitivi and Asthat, 9:45-9:47 Dragon. [return to text]  
3 See the excerpt from _Carta, Chargers, and the Thedas Menace: Mercenary Life in the Dragon Age_ by Julit Lovias and Filandraen Toria, 6:23 Starsteel, found on page 69. of the Appendix.[return to text]
> 
> Thank you for reading! :)


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